"I should make you know," she went on, resolutely, "it was my life—yes, my life—but my honor, no—never—which was in jeopardy."
"Thank God! thank God for that!" the young man almost groaned, bowing himself together, while his grasp tightened upon the pretty little gold and gray bag almost mercilessly.
He sat upright, took a deep breath, staring with unseeing eyes at the bright, variegated prospect of shops, houses, trees, traffic, people scampering past on either side the rushing car. Only now did he begin to gauge the vital character of his recent misery, and the tremendous force of the love which in so happily constituted and circumstanced a man as himself could render such a misery possible. Until to-day, until, indeed, this thrice-blessed minute when he learned from her own lips that no shame sullied her, he had never really gauged the depth of his love for Gabrielle St. Leger, or quite realized how all the many ambitions, interests, satisfactions of his very agreeable existence were as so much dust, froth, garbage, burnt-out cinder in comparison to that love. He had told Anastasia Beauchamp, in the course of a certain memorable conversation, he would devote his life to that love. But, he now discovered, it was quite unnecessary that he should take active steps toward the production or maintenance of it, since his life was already almost alarmingly devoted, leaving room, in truth, as he now perceived, for nothing outside that same love. And thereupon—the balance essaying to right itself, as in sane, healthy natures it instinctively must and will—poor Joanna Smyrthwaite's face, and its expression of semi-idiot ecstasy, as he had seen it only two nights ago at the Tower House on the gallery in the checkered moonlight, arose before him. Adrian was conscious of pulling himself together sharply.—Love—if you will—and with all the strength, all the vigor of his nature. But to dote? Devil take the notion—no thank you! Never, if he knew it, would he dote.
Wherefore, it followed that his wits were very thoroughly, if very tenderly, about him when next Gabrielle St. Leger spoke.
"I see now," she said, "the method by which he proposed we—he and myself—should die amounted to an absurdity, since it involved the concurrence of his servant."
Covered by the noise of the car, Adrian permitted himself the relief of cursing a little quietly under his breath.
"But at the time I could not reason. I found myself too confused and terrified by the extraordinary and horrible things he told me—things in themselves demented, extravagant, yet as he told them so apparently sensible. His poor, disordered brain was so fertile in expedients that from moment to moment I could not foresee what fresh unnatural demand he might make on me, what new scheme he might not devise for my destruction."
"Alone with a maniac no degree of fear can be excessive," Adrian asserted, warmly.
For he perceived her pride was touched, so that her self-esteem called for support and encouragement. To his hearing her words conveyed a rather pathetic hint of apology, both to herself and to him, for that moment of wild self-abandonment.
"It doesn't require much imagination," he went on, "to understand the danger you ran was appalling—in every way appalling—simply that. And, good heavens! why didn't I know?" he broke out, slapping his two hands down on his knees in sudden fury. "Why didn't my instinct warn me, thick-headed fool that I am? Why didn't I get to that hateful carrion-bird's roost of a studio an hour, half an hour earlier? Pardon me, dear Madame," he added, moderating his transports, "if I shock you by my violence. But when I consider what you must have endured, when I picture what might have happened, I confess I am almost beside myself with rage and distress."